When the checkered flag flies at the end of Sunday’s NASCAR Cup Series Championship Race at Phoenix Raceway, it won’t just mark the end of the 2022 NASCAR season. It’ll also mark the 15-year run for Kyle Busch at Joe Gibbs Racing.
While Busch will pilot what appears to be a normal No. 18 M&M’s Toyota Camry for his final race, upon closer examination, you’ll see that isn’t the case. The car will feature a mosaic photo collage embedded in the colorful M&M’s paint scheme.
The collage will commemorate the incredible amount of accolades that Busch and the race team have achieved together since the start of the 2008 season through the incredible fanbase that Busch and the No. 18 M&M’s team have built through the years.
Joe Gibbs Racing shared a brief video of the scheme via social media on Tuesday:
Thank you, fans! @mmschocolate pic.twitter.com/svfprCCdav
— Joe Gibbs Racing (@JoeGibbsRacing) November 1, 2022
Busch is a huge fan of Phoenix Raceway and the driver that was bounced from the Playoffs in the Round of 16 says he would like nothing more than to spoil the party for the Playoff drivers by scoring the win on Sunday.
“I really like Phoenix, and we won there a couple of times since they changed the start-finish line,” Busch said in a team release. “So much has changed since then. It’s entirely different now, so maybe we can still be good when we go back there, hopefully, but a lot’s been going on in the development of everybody’s cars this year with the NextGen car, so we will see where we stack up and how much has changed since we were there in March.
“We’ll see what we have this weekend with our M&M’S Camry and we would like nothing better than to spoil the fun and take another trophy home. It’s been quite a ride with M&M’s over the years and it’s pretty cool to have a lot of images of Rowdy Nation along for the ride. We’ll give them all we can this weekend.”
In all, Busch has scored 56 of his 60-career NASCAR Cup Series victories as well as both of his NASCAR Cup Series Championships while driving for the team. Busch also accrued 90 of his 102 NASCAR Xfinity Series wins while driving under the JGR banner and he was the 2009 champion of that Series driving for the team.
It’s been a truly remarkable run, but Sunday marks the end of an era for Busch and Joe Gibbs Racing.
For 2023, Busch will be heading to Richard Childress Racing to drive the No. 8 car in the NASCAR Cup Series. Busch officially announced his move to RCR on September 13th in an announcement at the NASCAR Hall of Fame.
